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Monday, 1 October 2012

Introduction to M. D. Nalapat's Anthology 'Indutva' (1999)

In 1999, Har-Anand published Indutva an anthology of MD Nalapat's 1990s columns from the Times of India. The individual columns are posted here, in 1998 and 1999 of the blog archive, though the exact dates of publication are uncertain. This is an introduction to the anthology.

Conventional wisdom has it that India was colonised for a

millennium, from the time when Mahmud Ghori finally succeeded

in defeating Prithviraj Chauhan and establishing Mughal rule on

the subcontinental soil. In fact, while formally the country was

ruled by its own inhabitants before then, the fact is that even

before the Mughals, the majority of the population was living as

subject. The caste system in India was a form of social oppression

that was the equal of colonial rule. In such a system, those

belonging to the "lower castes" had no incentive to help the

"forward castes" battle the invader. For them, rule by the

Mughals meant only the exchange of one form of subjugation by

another.

Inequality is a fact of existence. Differences in attributes and

incomes will be present in any society. However, this is not the

same as oppression, whereby the underprivileged are denied a

reasonable chance to improve their condition. Where pre-Mughal

India failed was in perpetuating a system with few safety valves;

a system in which the "lower orders" got their rank determined

from birth, and consequently had no opportunity to escape. It is

I ironic that those who (correctly) point to the exploitation of

India's colonial masters over a millennium are mostly silent on

the social conditions that fragmented subcontinental society, and

fatally weakened its defensive capabilities.

The defeat of Prithviraj Chauhan came out of two fundamental

causes. First, the fragmentation of his social milieu, which

resulted in less than 10% of his subjects forming the pool from

which his officer cadre got created. As a consequence, the

motivation of the rest would have been weak, in that they were

not fighting for the continuation of their liberty, but to preserve

the privileges of the ruling easiest They themselves were given

no freedoms under such a system.

The other reason for the failure to resist the invasion was the

defensive mindset of the subcontinent’s rulers. Rather than wait

passively for each invasion by the persistent Ghori, Chauhan

needed to mobilize other rulers in the region and launch a

surprise attack on the base areas of the invaders. Such a move

may have changed the course of India’s history, and pushed the

subcontinent’s footprint further westwards. However, this

fatalistic mindset ensured that any such strategy was not tried.

Indeed, even today such an approach holds sway, with the result

that national security gets compromised.

If the schism was between the "forwards" and the "backwards"

during the battle against the Mughals, it became a Hindu-

Muslim one during the struggle against the British. While

condemning Mohammed Ali Jinnah for vivisecting the

subcontinent, many of our historians ignore the mistakes made

by the then Congress leadership in dealing with Jinnah, and

more broadly with the communal question. From giving oxygen

to the fanatic Khilafat movement to adopting a song that had

negative connotations in the Muslim mind, Congress leaders

alternately pandered to and then condemned the rise of

exclusivism in the subcontinent’s second largest religious group.

The term "Nationalist Muslim" became a term of abuse, almost

as much as the expression "Hindu Nationalist” is politically

incorrect today.

Despite its size and resilience, India took much longer to

secure its freedom than it should, Sometime during the interwar

period, the, country ought to have been given Dominion Status,

placing it on par with Canada or Australia. That never happened,

partly because of Colonel Blimps in Britain, but also because of

the tactical errors made by the Congress leadership in dealing

with both British as well as international opinion, crucially in the

United States. This strengthened those who regarded Hindus as

"shifty" and gravitated towards the pinstriped Jinnah, who

made no secret of his support to the British war effort;

There is the story of a soldier who was ordered to bear a

hundred lashes or eat a kilo of salt as punishment. He first took

a bit of the salt, and then asked for the lashes. After getting a few,

he changed his mind and asked for the salt instead. Finally, he

ended up absorbing both the punishments. This was the Congress

attitude during much of the 1930s, when the party appeared to

have two heads, both giving contradictory orders. There would

be a bout of attempted reconciliation with the British, followed

by a violent lunge in the opposite direction. Indian historians

have either not cared — or not dared — to analyse such

dissonances, though a consensus is emerging that the core of the

aggressive lobby was lawaharlal Nehru. By succumbing to his

line, the Congress got distanced from both the British and Jinnah,

leading to a 'delay in self-rule and to the Partition.

Many of those active in the freedom struggle behaved as

though their objective was the securing of ministerial berths for

themselves, no matter what consequences these entailed for the

country. Instead, had their subliminal — as distinct from the

stated — objective been freedom and prosperity for the

subcontinent’s population, they would have factored in the

ground realities while working out their strategies. These would

have argued in favour of policies that made the British

establishment accept the inevitability of a free India, and reassured

Jinnah’s significant constituency that they would be co-equal

sharers of power in a united country. However, as in many other

instances in the past, emotion took precedence over reason.

Glands, in other words, were more decisive in policy formulation

than brains.

Despite partition, the residue that calls itself the Republic of

India is on track to emerge as a great power early in the next

century, and a superpower thereafter. Had vivisection been

avoided in 1947, such a process may already have taken place.

Hopefully the lessons of the past will get internalised, and

policies crafted that will ensure a subcontinental common market

embracing Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar,

India, Bangla Desh, Bhutan and the Maldives. It is in the

economic interest of India's neighbours to create a "Rupee Zone"

in which the Indian currency will be legal tender. This will

enable them to access Indian capital and markets to the extent

needed to generate a reasonable rate of growth. Given the

poverty in the region, this has to be 9% per year.

However, such policies can only get developed in an

environment where the past gets objectively analysed. There

should be no sacred cows in history. The fact is that India got

freedom ninety years after the War of Independence began in

1857. It got divided before this, first by the detachment of Sri

Lanka and Myanmar and later by the creation of Pakistan. Those

strategic planners in the United Kingdom who hoped to hobble

the residual India made an error. They assumed that India

would be hostile to the West, and hence needed to be boxed in

by the creation of "friendly" entities. Today, Myanmar at least

is no ally of the West, while Pakistan has become one of the

primary factories for the drugesterror lobby. It is only the

continued development of India as a moderate democracy with

a liberal economic policy that can act as a counterweight to such

adverse tendencies. Ironically, the countries that were put in the

role of "allies" have objectively become strategically hostile to

Western interests, while the recalcitrant, India, is emerging as a

friend.

Like most processes, this too is not immediately visible. At

present, New Delhi is at odds with the United States, Japan and

the European Union, all three of which seek to give Communist

China a strategic monopoly in Asia. They clearly expect that the

chemistry of economic liberalisation in that ancient civilisation

will generate unstoppable pressures for political reform, and the

consequent toppling of the Communist regime. lust as the 1940s

sums of the UK strategic experts went wrong in South Asia, such

doomsday views on the longevity (or lack of it) of the Communist

Party of China are likely to be proved false. At least for the next

three decades, the CPC is likely to continue to dominate China.

And as the country expands in muscle, it can be expected to

assert its role as the Middle Kingdom—the true centre of world

power, displacing the United States.

China will have three thrust areas: the East Asian-ASEAN

region, where it will challenge the US and Japan; Central Asia,

to provide an alternative to the Gulf for securing fossil fuels; and

Siberia, which can effectively be colonised by the movement of

Chinese populations to the region. South Asia is of relevance

only because Beijing, since the 1950s help given to the Dalai

Lama by the Nehru government, sees New Delhi as hostile to its

integrity. Thus it seeks to contain India and defang it strategically,

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About Prof. MD Nalapat

Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat (aka MD Nalapat or Monu Nalapat), holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and is Director of the Department of Geopolitics at Manipal University, India. The former Coordinating Editor of the Times of India, he writes extensively on security, policy and international affairs. Prof. Nalapat has no formal role in government, although he is said to influence policy at the highest levels. @MDNalapat

MD Nalapat's anthology 'Indutva' (1999)

In 1999, Har-Anand published Indutva an anthology of MD Nalapat's 1990s columns from the Times of India. The individual columns are posted here, in 1998 and 1999 of the blog archive, though the exact dates of publication are uncertain.